Chinese authorities informed their UK counterparts that they had barred the 64-year-old from the country after his arrival at 11pm local time.

Paedophile Glitter, travelling under his real name of Paul Gadd, had flown to the Chinese territory from Bangkok where he had refused to board a flight to London's Heathrow airport.

In what was becoming a farcical merry-go-round as the disgraced pop star desperately tried to avoid returning to the UK, sources said Chinese authorities were considering returning Glitter to Thailand.

The Home Office last night denied Glitter was travelling on a passport issued in November. A spokesman said he had held a passport since 2002.

"We do not enforce the return of sex offenders and such people overseas are entitled to a passport," he added.

"The Royal Prerogative which removes the right to passports has only been used 17 times since 1947, mainly to prevent terrorism offences.

"As the Home Secretary made clear today, we deal with sex offenders rigorously and effectively here and we prevent those here who present a risk going overseas, but it is not our policy to force them all to return to live in the United Kingdom."

Earlier yesterday Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Britain could not enforce Glitter's return but must have a plan if he did return.

If and when he arrives in the UK, he will be met at the airport by police officers and served with an order which effectively will put him on the sex offenders' register.

Asked about Glitter while on a visit to Tooting, south London, Ms Smith said: "What I am concerned about is, whoever the individual sex offender is, that we have in place the necessary provisions to monitor them."

Ms Smith announced tighter controls on the movement of paedophiles but she dismissed a suggestion that the Government had wanted a "celebrity paedophile" to promote the crackdown and had found it "embarrassing" that Glitter had not come home.

"No paedophile is a celebrity, every paedophile needs to be controlled," she said.

She added that Glitter was "despicable".

Glitter arrived in Hong Kong on the TG 602 Thai Airways service after spending more than 20 hours in the transit lounge at Bangkok airport following his release from a Vietnamese prison on Tuesday.

Immigration police at Hong Kong airport said privacy laws meant they could not comment on Glitter's case.

Glitter flew from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Bangkok on Tuesday night and was due to board a connecting flight to Heathrow but refused.

He was refused entry into Thailand and immigration officials said he would be taken to a detention centre if he continued to refuse to leave the country.

Glitter was treated for a heart condition while in prison and he had said he wanted to return to the UK for treatment.

He served two years and nine months of a three-year sentence for abusing two girls aged 10 and 11 in Vietnam.

Glitter was convicted of downloading child pornography in the UK in 1999 and served two months of a four-month sentence. He the left the country.